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Chatbots and AI will improve the customer experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are helping revolutionize all varied tasks in all kinds of industries, from production lines in manufacturing to online retail. And on the back of technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and chatbots, AI is rapidly expanding to more and more parts of the business world.

Hand in hand with that has been a growing consumer acceptance of AI in their daily lives. There has been an increasingly widespread adoption of all types of AI-enabled devices and apps, from smart devices and drones to self-service kiosks and autonomous vehicles. It seems that people are becoming increasingly comfortable with AI and the benefits it can bring – particularly when it comes to customer experience.

RPA transforming the customer journey

RPA automates a range of business processes usually handled by humans, and its software helps streamline traditional rule-based activities within the customer journey.

A typical customer journey encompasses all the steps a customer takes when trying to purchase a product or service from a supplier. Customer journeys can be relatively straightforward or complicated, they can be a single interaction between consumer and supplier or a continuously shifting, ongoing process. There are pain points along the way, but RPA can be a great tool in helping overcome the challenges and deliver great benefits. But what can companies that deploy RPA and AI solutions now expect?

1. Consistency. Bringing robots into the customer experience picture means companies can deliver a consistent level of service to customers where interactions are handled efficiently, and error-free, at all times of day.

2. A more holistic experience. RPA enables companies to research what customers want to see, hear, think and be told throughout their customer journey. By implementing RPA at key points, companies can deliver a fast and intuitive experience, giving consumers an overall experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

3. Intelligence-as-a-Service. Gartner analyst Tom Austin has predicted that cloud migration and the advent of Intelligence-as-a-Service will make AI available to everyone. Developers have had access to IBM’s Watson APIs since 2013, with 80,000 of them using the APIs to develop what IBM has called “self-service artificial intelligence,” while Microsoft offers over twenty “cognitive services,” such as image recognition (“computer vision”) and speech recognition. Amazon, meanwhile, is developing the AWS catalog with a machine learning predictive analytics service. In May 2016, Google announced it was opening up three APIs – translation, natural language processing and speech-to-text in 80 languages. Lastly, Alibaba Cloud, a China-based business unit of e-commerce giant Alibaba, launched image, video and speech recognition services.

Powering the next level of customer experience

Chatbots are also central to transforming the customer experience, and more companies are embracing them as they look to address the growing need for an omnichannel customer service approach. Chatbots possess cognitive technology which lets them interpret customers’ text or voice inquiries and respond with accurate, automated answers that are designed to quickly resolve routine customer service issues.

Chatbots help companies cut response times while also providing a round-the-clock presence, and ultimately improve the overall customer experience. These virtual assistants now “know” hundreds of thousands of data items about company offerings and in some instances are able to meet 99 percent of customer needs. They can converse in multiple languages and utilize natural language, making handover between human agents and virtual assistants a seamless exercise. They also gather data that can give valuable insights into customer needs and free up human employees to work on more complicated tasks.

Powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution

RPA is quickly becoming recognized as the next step in automation. Cloud-based RPA uses machine learning to mimic user actions and map enormous quantities of data, learning and adapting as it goes. It will therefore be able to take over a large number of time-consuming, error-prone duties such as purchase order processing, without the need for human touch or explicitly programmed instructions. Though dependent on the size of the implementation, RPA’s agility also means that its application and deployment can take mere weeks or months instead of years.

Market studies bear out the likely potential for RPA: according to Global Market Insights, RPA market share is forecast to exceed $5 billion by 2024, as organizations seek to enhance their capabilities and performance while also reducing operating costs.

I’ve been writing about technology for around 15 years and today focus mainly on all things telecoms - next generation networks, mobile, cloud computing and plenty more. For Futurity Media I am based in the Asia-Pacific region and keep a close eye on all things tech happening in that exciting part of the world.